


Lose Yourself In Lines

by rowofstars



Category: The Hour
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Post-Series, Pre-Series, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 03:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3274616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They start the same way (again), or maybe they just pick up where they left off. Randall and Lix, their past and their future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lose Yourself In Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marcasite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcasite/gifts).



> This has been sort of a labor of love for me. I have loved this pairing since I finally watched the show last summer. It's taken a while for a proper idea to manifest and then even longer to get all the words out. I hope you all enjoy. Comments are love. The sources of the quotes are (in order): Aristotle, Shakespeare Sonnet 151.
> 
> In case it's at all confusing, this fic alternates POV between Randall and Lix, and also jumps from past/pre-series to present/post-series.
> 
> For Michelle. She knows why.

They start the same way (again), or maybe they just pick up where they left off.

But the world is in a different kind of war.

Don’t call it a second chance.

 

 

 

 

There’s a space on the fourth shelf, just inside the glass cabinet door. 

Randall notices immediately. His eyes keep going to it whenever he looks up from his desk. He stares at it for a long moment, remembers it was Keats and bound in a dark green, but he isn’t sure which edition. His fingers tap against the blotter and he looks away, frowning.

The notepad is straightened, the pages are lifted and fanned against his thumb before being pressed flat. The pen is moved from the top edge to lay along the left side. The lighter is turned ninety degrees.

Lix knows that he knows, but says nothing. 

They both leave it as one more thing unsaid and lingering.

It’s not as if he cares that she nicks his books, slipping into his office after he’s left for the day at some obscenely late hour, after the show airs, after the dust settles, after there is nothing left to keep him from the stagnant, lonely air of his flat. Yet she always returns them. It might be days or weeks later, perhaps after she thinks he’s forgotten about it, forgot he owned that particular edition, or maybe just not noticed the gap on the shelf.

She admits that she stole them, but never apologizes because that’s not her. He thanks her, not because it’s the polite thing to do, but because it let’s her know that it’s okay. And because it keeps her coming back. He still needs that, even after all these years and miles between them. 

She remains one of the few things that makes the itch just a little bit less.

She took his books back then too, what few there were to take, from the rows on the narrow shelves over his writing desk. He always noticed, even if it took him half a day to figure out what seemed out of place or missing. 

She never put them back in the right order. 

It was her way of making sure he knew.

The door opens, shaking him from his thoughts, and he glances up, face blank and unsurprised at her presence in his doorway. She’s in her coat, gloves peeking out of her pocket, and he can tell that she didn’t expect to see him.

“Still here?” she asks, holding up the book and waving it a bit by way of an explanation.

He lowers his gaze to the papers he was reading, picking up the pen and shifting it in his hand, sliding his thumb over the clip three times. “It would seem so,” he replies, dryly.

Her lips twist, half a smile and half a smirk as she stretches up on her toes to replace the book exactly as she had found it. He can’t help how his eyes follow her movements.

“Do you need to _borrow_ another?” he asks, just as she turns to leave.

She stops, throwing a questioning glance over her shoulder, and then looks back to the shelves of books and glass doors. She smiles at him. “No, I still have two more,” she says, holding up two fingers and wiggling them a little.

He frowns because he had only noticed one missing, and now, until he finds the places the other two used to occupy, the nagging itch will have his hands clenching into fists. A moment later, his face softens to a tight smile.

“Good,” he replies, and he means it, watching her as she moves to the door.

Things are more relaxed between them since she started stealing his books with greater frequency, and apparently greater quantity. He remembers how the two of them used to sit against the headboard, or curled into each other on the sofa, reading the same book, lost in the touch of each other and the words on the page. 

He wants to ask her why Keats, why Eliot the week before, why anything, but he doesn't know how to press her for answers. There are so many questions running rampant in his head. Before she had been almost terrifyingly easy to talk to, and he had been too ready to bare his soul for someone who didn't need to try to understand him.

She nods, finally. “Good night, Randall.”

He swallows at the dull thud of the door closing, once again waiting for answers in the silence.

“Good night.”

 

 

 

 

Lix swallows and shuts her eyes as the burn works its way down her throat, warming her chest, to settle heavy in her stomach. She sets the glass down and sighs as she moves to light another cigarette. She has to be careful and watch how much she drinks tonight because this is the last bottle they have. But the woman’s eyes won’t leave her mind. They were so wide, so dark, such a startling contrast to the frail white skin of the woman’s face.

She wonders how long the body had lain there before they came along. She wonders if she’ll ever have the courage to develop the film. The camera is sitting on the corner of her desk like it’s a spider lying in wait. Her hand shakes as she raises the cigarette to her lips.

She likes to imagine her name was Maria, or Mariana, maybe Teresa, something that sounds like it would belong to a saint.

The bottle is tilted halfway to her glass again when the door opens. The man who enters is all limbs, and the duffel bag that hangs over his shoulder looks like it weighs more than he does. He swallows and pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his prominent nose with his middle finger.

She would laugh if she could remember how. Instead she asks, “Are you lost?”

He frowns and looks around the meager office, his eyes finally settling on her camera. “I suspect not.”

He crosses to her and holds out a folded piece of paper like a schoolboy approaching his teacher with a note from his mother. “George sent me.”

She snatches it from him, still scowling, and unfolds it, skimming the lines. “Bloody George,” she mutters. “Well, Mr. Brown, welcome to Spain.”

He takes the paper from her and tucks it in his pocket, standing there like he doesn't know what to do with himself next. She supposes she can’t blame him. He looks older than she is which means the last war isn’t as distant of a memory for him as it is for her.

It seems like all the world does anymore is move from one conflict to the next. There’s barely any time to bury the dead in between.

“That’s - .” She almost says _Jimmy’s_ desk, but just catches herself at the last moment, pointing to the other side of the room. The desk sits empty save for a typewriter and a small lamp. There is a fine layer of dust covering everything and Randall’s fingers curl into a fist at his side as the other hand tightens around the strap of his bag. 

“Something wrong?” she asks, watching him as she refills her glass.

He sighs and drops his bag to the floor. “It’s fine,” he replies, but his voice seems tight and she suspects it’s very much not fine, whatever the reason.

Then he pulls out his handkerchief and begins to wipe off the desk surface, the lamp, the typewriter. She watches almost in awe, smoking her cigarette down to a nub, as he works, taking apart as much of the typewriter as he can, and running the cloth over the keys. She likes watching his hands. He has long, elegant fingers that she suspects could type circles around her.

When he’s done, she rummages in her bottom drawer and pulls out another glass. “Drink?” she asks, holding out the bottle.

He raises an eyebrow at her, but accepts the offer, and pours some for himself. She grins and licks her lips, and doesn't miss the quick dart of his eyes to her mouth and back.

She lifts her glass. “Cheers.”

 

 

 

 

You should understand that Paris was not Randall’s first choice.

The office had two boarded up windows, barely functioning lights, and there was graffiti in the hallway painted over with only one coat of paint. It remained a chilling reminder of the state of the world just a year ago.

_We make war that we may live in peace._

But he does not feel at peace. He feels restless and uncertain now, anxious always, and unsettled at best. Sometimes, he wonders where she is, where both of them are. Her letter sits between the pages of Tennyson in his bedside table. His reply remains unwritten.

He would say he just hasn't had the time, that his responsibilities to rebuild this office are too numerous, but his skeletons are just the same. He pulls and repins the tacks in the bulletin board, straightens the chairs in the newsroom so they stand like soldiers, shoulder to shoulder.

He touches the spines of each book in his office, counts them, in English and then in French, and bites back the sadness that there are never any missing, never any he can’t lay his hands on immediately.

There is a saying about old habits, and his past drives a hard bargain.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, Lix dreams.

She wakes up in her office, sheet bunched at her ankles, blanket wrapped around her waist and trailing onto the floor. She remembers the small things like the color of her dress, the smell of the air, the feel of his hand on hers. It’s all too fleeting. By the afternoon she will have only vague impressions.

She sighs and sits up, kicking free of the bedding.

Bel Rowley’s voice is in her head.

_“Are you alright?” Bel asks._

_She sighs and rubs at her eyes. “Why is everyone asking me that?”_

_Bel crosses her arms and gives her a look. “Because you've been different ever since Mr. Brown came here.”_

_Lix looks away. “I already asked you not to make me lie to you.”_

She shifts to the side of the bed, swinging her legs over to wiggle her feet into her shoes. Sleep will remain elusive for a time, the dream unsettling her mind. There is the sense that she is missing something, and the thought makes her heart twist. Her eyes start to burn too, and she wishes she could cry or scream, or that she had the sort of girlfriend whose shoulder you could douse in tears and throw a fit to without guilt or judgment.

She enters the hallway, pausing to rub her eyes and stretch before making her way to the restroom. She stops at the door, staring down the hallway to the office at the end.

His light is on, blurred and glowing into the dark corridor. She hesitates and pulls at her wrinkled blouse. It’s late, she reminds herself.

Just this morning while she was making a cup of tea, he came in, sorting through the mail and frowning. She watched him, taking him in as he stood near the wall, remembering him with rolled up shirtsleeves, the cuffs over his elbows, and his hair falling in his eyes. Sometimes it still doesn't seem real, like it happened to other people.

She’s always had an idea of them, but it’s too romantic a notion, one better suited to one of those thin novellas she used to read before he showed up with armfuls of Blake and Keats, Dickens and Hawthorne. Sighing, she pushes her fingers through her hair.

Down the hall, a door opens and then closes.

He turns, looks, and then turns away again. She sighs and pushes into the restroom.

 

 

 

 

Randall frowns at the room.

He looks around, eyes keen on each surface, skimming over each item on his desk and mentally cataloging them. The itch nags in the back of his mind. Moving into the space, his fingers graze the stack of folders, touch the carriage return lever of the typewriter. He pauses to straighten his fountain pen next to the blotter.

It takes him a few more minutes, and more fiddling with the containers and stacks on his desk, but he finally notices what’s out of place, and what’s missing.

There’s a book set backwards on one of the shelves over his desk, turned so the pages are sticking out. His frown deepens as he crosses the room, catching the scent of something he can’t immediately place. When he reaches the desk, he pulls the book off the shelf and slides it back in the right way, touching the spine of each book before stepping back.

There is one missing.

He takes a deep breath and notices the faint smell again, roses maybe, which is out of place for a shabby office in Barcelona. He’s just turning around when she comes stumbling in, wrapped in laughter and smoke.

She stops, eyes wide in surprise, hair wild, dress loose and flowing around her legs.

She yells something in Spanish through the open door, and he can hear other voices, but can’t see who is with her.

“Hello,” she says to him, finally. Then she laughs again, and he knows she’s probably been drinking. They’re all always drinking. It’s the territory these days, knowing that what’s coming is coming faster than the world wants it to.

He doesn't know what to say, or how to react, so he stands there watching as she crosses the space towards him. 

“I just wanted to return this,” she says, holding out his missing book. “I may have stolen it.”

He smirks a little and takes the book from her. “May have?”

She shrugs, smiles, and moves around the desk to stand in front of him. “You should come with us.”

He winces slightly. “I don’t like parties.”

“But you like drinking,” she replies, eyebrows raised.

His lips twitch, and her smile widens. She’s close, maybe too close, and everything is caught in his throat. Her fingers brush his wrist, his arm, and it’s just an accident. 

Maybe. 

He doesn't know if she’s waiting for him to say something more and he can feel himself starting to panic. There is just so much _life_ in her eyes, and they are so impossibly deep and bright at the same time. She might be too beautiful for her own good, his own good for sure, and she’s looking at him like -

She steps back then. “You don’t have to,” she says. “I just thought that-”

“No,” he says suddenly. “I do.”

She grins again, biting her lip in a way that’s both too innocent and entirely too dangerous, and holds out her hand.

This is not pretend anymore.

 

 

 

 

It's his office again, late and dark with rain tapping against the windows. Lix brings the bottle from her desk drawer and two glasses, and sits at the small table across from his desk. The last time she sat here they were both falling apart, choked with a loss they didn't believe was theirs to feel. The memory clings to her mind like the smoke in her clothes.

Randall stands beside his chair, half in shadow, the fingers of his right hand just touching the corner of the desk.

“I don’t understand why you’re still here,” she says as she flicks her lighter. There is no bite in her voice, just a statement of her never ending confusion over him.

“The show must go on,” he sighs. “After what happened to Mr. Lyon-"

He trails off and turns around, fixing his gaze out the window of his office. Then he adds, "They want to shut us down. And I can’t let them.”

She frowns, taking another drag of her cigarette from the side of her mouth. That wasn't what she was asking when she wondered why he was still here, but it’s a conversation at least.

“Why? What happened was not your fault.”

“Not completely,” he admits, turning back towards her, but his eyes won’t meet hers all the way.

She shakes her head and taps off the ash into the heavy glass tray with a flick of her thumb. “Mr. Lyon is a stubborn idealist, not unlike someone I once knew.”

Her pause hangs between them, and he looks away again, this time down to straighten the small pad of paper, shifting it to align with the edge of the blotter. The pen next to it is moved and set along the top. She snuffs out the cigarette and opens the whiskey bottle, pouring a finger in each glass, while she watches him fiddle with this and that on his desk. Sometimes she still catches herself counting the things he touches.

“It’s no one’s fault but the brutes who put him in the hospital,” she says, finally. “The sooner you let go of this misplaced guilt, the better.”

Randall is pragmatic to a fault, she knows. He is no longer one for contemplating the cruel decisions of life. She isn't either, really, they've both been weathered too much to try to reason with fate. She knows who she was, who she is, and the complexity of choice that has shaped her life to this moment.

The noise he makes is almost a laugh. “We've never been very good at that, have we?”

He looks her in the eyes, finally, over the rim of her glass as she takes a slow sip. She licks her lips after she swallows.

“At letting go?” she asks. Her lips press and purse, slowly turning into a smirk. “Not especially.”

He gives her a small smile and finally moves to sit in the chair across the table from her. She slides the second glass towards him and it takes a minute’s contemplation before he picks it up.

“Have you spoken to Miss Rowley?”

Lix shifts in her chair, tucking her legs up under her. “Not since last week.”

He hums and lifts the glass, swirling the whisky around gently.

“I want to know. I _care_ ,” she continues, “about how he’s doing. We all do. I just don’t want her to feel like I’m pushing.” She lights another cigarette out of nerves. “I _know_ I do that, you know. I do.”

“You do,” he agrees, and the tilt of his head makes her smile. 

She touches the bottle, thinking of pouring more into her glass, and then thinks better of it. They are quiet, until he finally takes another drink and then drops the glass to the tabletop. The noise is sharp and it startles her. Her eyes snap to his and the way he’s looking at her is unnerving and waiting.

“Do you ever remember?” he asks.

She does.

“Randall,” she starts, “let’s not -”

“Do you?” he interrupts, catching her gaze before looking away, down towards the rim of the glass he’s slowly turning in place.

“Sometimes,” she replies. “But it wasn't worth dwelling on.”

As soon as the words are out she regrets them. She doesn't mean for him to think they weren't worth it. They were, and so was Sofia even if things didn't end the way either of them might have wanted.

“I don’t mean -” she starts to say, hating the idea of leaving one more thing unresolved between them.

“I know,” he says softly. “I’m sorry.”

He gives her a look and it’s the kind of look she’s not sure she can handle right now. It softens him, makes him look younger, and makes her feel older.

“For what?” She shifts in her chair, unfolding her legs and leaning with her elbows on the table.

“I didn't -” He catches himself, presses the side of his fist to his lips for a moment. “I was terrible at a lot of things.” 

He rests his arm on the table, his hand stretching into the middle of it like he’s reaching for her, but his fingers curl into a fist, holding himself back. “I didn't know how.”

She sighs and wraps her hand over his.

“Don’t,” she says, and her voice almost catches on the lump in her throat. “We were both a mess.”

“I know.”

 _I should have been better at loving you_ , he doesn't say.

She squeezes his hand. “There are always things we could have done better.”

Then his hand shifts, opening and curling his fingers around hers. “Love is too young to know what conscience is.”

Randall’s eyes are just a touch overbright when they catch hers. She remembers too easily how they used to be.

_( It goes something like this: the air was hot, the sky was bright, and she was standing with her fists clenched at her sides in anger because she was in love and the world couldn't seem to stop being at war._

_He kissed her hard and hot, and she discovered he was angry too._

_They both tasted of too much whisky. )_

“Shakespeare,” she says with small smile. “Really, Randall, how cliché.”

He shrugs, lets her hand go, and turns his glass again.

She finishes her drink in one swallow, and they stand together. He follows her to the door, his hand hovering behind her back all the way to door. Absently, she pats the lapel of his suit jacket with her right hand as the left remains holding the doorknob.

“I’ll stop by the hospital tomorrow,” she says.

He looks down at her hand, and she lets it fall away to her side. He swallows hard. “I’d understand if Miss Rowley needed some time, but I’m afraid the show will need a producer.”

Lix sighs. “I’ll speak to her, but -” She trails off and shakes her head.

He nods again and then glances back to the table. “I’ll return those to your office.”

She nods too. “Thank you.”

The door closes heavy behind her.

They have memories. Some they share, most they do not, even of the time they were together. It’s somehow always been hers and his and never theirs. Sofia was perhaps the thing that could have changed that, but now Lix isn't sure if it was ever possible. 

War isn't a place for love, and somewhere they are still at war.

 

 

 

 

“Miss Storm.”

He is standing stiffly in her hallway adjusting his glasses, and she smirks as she leans into the space between the jam and the half open door. 

“Mr. Brown,” she replies, lifting her cigarette to the corner of her mouth.

He clears his throat. “I believe that you have some of my books, Miss Storm.”

“I do?” She laughs lightly, and lets the door open all the way, moving closer.

He frowns when he sees she’s in pajamas and her dressing gown, something that looks like a black silk wrap with a pattern of cherry blossoms and a red sash. I surprises him that she would open the door dressed that way, but in the short time he’s known her she has never been one for any sort of convention. He tries not to look, not really, but the wrap gapes open at her chest and he feels his throat tighten.

He gives his head a quick shake, and if she notices she doesn't react.

“Have you forgotten or perhaps misplaced them?” he asks.

She smiles. “If I have how would I know?”

They regard each other for a moment until she rolls her eyes at him and steps aside. “Oh, come in and have a drink, Randall.”

He eyes her for a moment, and then steps into her flat, moving aside to let her shut and latch the door.

“Whisky?” she asks, stepping lightly around the sofa, her wrap flowing out behind her like a cape, to lift the half empty bottle from the small table beside it.

“Is there anything else?” he says in retort, still standing by the door.

She turns to him and frowns. “Well there’s a very small bottle of vodka I won off of Eddie when we played cards last week, but I’m saving that for a special occasion.”

“That was intended to be a joke and also rhetorical,” he replies, finally moving towards her.

He takes the glass she offers, and holds it steady as she pours with one hand and raises her cigarette to her mouth with the other. It’s a little more than strange to him to be in her space, to be away from their makeshift newsroom or the pub, away from the comfortable borders that the presence of other people provide.

She blows out the smoke and smiles at him again. “You’re terrible at telling jokes.”

He ignores her comment, not that he disagrees exactly, and thanks her for the drink. The window is open and he crosses the room to stand by it while she sinks onto the sofa, curling her legs under her.

He looks back at her and then away, out the window and into the street. The moon is bright, and the streets are strangely busy. Noise, conversation, and music fade in and out. It’s nice, it’s normal, and if he closes his eyes and can almost imagine he’s home, in a real city alive with people who are not aware of how afraid they should be of war.

“It’s starting to show,” he hears her say, and he turns to face her, leaning against the wall by the window.

“What is?” he asks, and then sips at the whisky.

Her glass is on the side table, but the cigarette is still dangling elegantly between her fingers.

“That none of us are getting any sleep,” she replies. “We’re all spread too thin.”

“It’s war.” He shrugs. “And the story won’t tell itself. Isn't that why newspeople drink?”

She grins and stands, stubbing out the remains of her cigarette in the small ashtray before crossing the room to stand just the other side of the window from him. She carries her drink by the rim in her left hand. There is a grace to the way she moves, the way she flows through the simple space of the flat, fluid and elegant.

“You know it’s very difficult to have a conversation with you.”

He raises an eyebrow. “We’re conversing now.”

She sighs, and he knows it’s one of those things that has always been said about him. People are not something he understands in singularities. Societies, armies, angry mobs, those he is more familiar with. He doesn’t know how to do this, especially not with her, and not without several more fingers of whisky in his blood.

“I was thinking,” she says then, “Maybe some of us should try to make it down the coast to Valencia.”

He nods. “Franco has failed to get much of a hold there, for now.”

“There was a boy in town today who told me about bands of refugees fleeing to France and following the coast. Might get some good shots.”

Again, he nods, and there’s the feeling they are reducing this war to something too simplistic, even if he knows it’s the right decision for the story.

“Your books are in the bedroom,” she says. In the pause, she takes a sip, watching him over the rim of the glass. “On the table in the corner by the lamp. I like to read in bed.”

The statement lingers, teasing him several possible meanings, one of which in particular he chooses to ignore. He can imagine how it might be to kiss her, the feeling of her lips, the taste of lipstick and whisky.

He downs the rest of his drink in a heavy glug. “I thought you said you couldn't sleep.”

“I don’t.” She shrugs and the whisky in her glass sloshes a bit. “But I do read. And maybe I sleep sometimes, I don’t know. Sometimes I wake up, and it’s morning, and sometimes I turn the page and it’s nearly seven.”

He sighs because he knows, and sometimes it’s the same for him too. Every day it feels like they are losing time. The world remains in a strange transition.

She looks down at his empty glass. “Do you want another?”

“No,” he replies with a small shake of his head. “I should go.”

“Of course.”

She turns slightly and pushes off the wall, moving to set her empty glass next the whisky bottle on the side table on her way to the door.

After a moment he follows after her, stopping as she opens the door, holding it open for him. “I’ll see if Hector can get us a car tomorrow,” he says.

Then he moves into the hallway, turning to bid her goodnight.

“Your books?” she reminds him, motioning with her arm towards the bedroom door.

He gives her a quiet smile. “Keep them. I don’t need them just now.”

 

 

 

 

If you go back a little, Lix might say that the idea that someone might love her, really love her, was borderline absurd. Real love, romantic, passionate love, was too fragile for someone like her.

That was not what they had.

She does not like to talk about Spain. Her Spanish is still sharp though, her memories sharper. The years between then and now have chipped at her, shaped her edges. She needs her edges.

Whenever she is asked about it, her memories are different. It’s always about the stories, the photographs, the uncertain certainty of life in war. She refuses to ever call it civil, regardless of what the history books might say. She forgets Maria, forgets Jimmy, forgets Eddie and Hector and Alberto. She even forgets _him_ for a time.

Yet, she always remembers that she fell in love. But it was not that kind of love.

 

 

 

 

The call comes on a Tuesday. He asks to sleep on it, but the truth is that he lays there staring at the ceiling. London, The Hour, Lix.

_Lix._

He remembers the warm, heady days of Spain, dirt roads rutted with tire tracks and a dangerous distance between one town and the next. She never hesitated with her camera, even when her eyes betrayed her feelings.

She was softer then, too. They both were.

He isn't sure he can go back, but there are things he needs to know answers they owe each other.

 

 

 

 

There is something Lix never understands, or has never understood, about the two of them, and why it seemed so effortless but ended up so much work. There was something they could have been, maybe, if they’d had more time. She still doesn't know how to embrace those memories, or how to need them in a way that isn’t saturated with regret. What she does know, too well, is that they did not end on either of their terms. 

It’s one more thing that feels unfinished.

His presence in her life again feels as necessary as it is infuriating. It scares her that he could be something she still wants, or that there would be such a thing as a second chance. They are different, maybe, or at least everything feels different, and she doesn't know where to begin to put them back together.

There’s a knock not long after she gets home, at an hour well before midnight for the first time in days. All she wants is one more drink and her bed, but there he is in the hallway outside her flat. 

“May I come in?”

She frowns at him. “I don’t suppose if I told you no that would change why you’re here?”

He presses his lips together and there is the faintest half smile before he clears his throat. “I need you to be the new producer.”

She sighs. Bel is in no shape, obviously, glued to Freddie's bedside even more now that he’s awake, which in itself is nothing short of a miracle.

“I’m tired, Randall,” she says, rubbing her forehead but stepping back to hold the door open for him. “Doesn't the board have someone in mind? They were so keen to replace Bel before, I should think they’d be jumping at the chance now.”

“I don’t want whoever the board would send me,” he replies. He pauses and looks back down the hallway to the stairs before crossing the threshold into her flat. “I want you to do it. Miss Rowley can have her job back when she chooses to return.”

Her eyes narrow as she holds his gaze, and she can see the unease spread over his features at the thought that she still might say no. She shuts the door firmly and locks it, leaving him standing there as she crosses to the small galley kitchen.

She sighs. “Fine.”

He is tentative in how he moves around her space, and she knows he’s probably reeling from the comfortable clutter she keeps. He takes off his hat and sets it in the middle of her small table. He moves the chair a little, left and then in against the edge of the table.

His eyes drift around the space and settle on the newspapers on the counter. She sees his fingers flex and shift at his sides.

“If you think I’m going to straighten up the place because you’re here, you can forget about it,” she says.

“You’re angry.”

It’s too matter of fact, too simple, and his tone makes her feel like a child. She fiddles with her cigarette before lighting it, blowing the smoke towards the open window. It’s warm and she doesn’t feel like smoking, but it’s the distraction she needs not anything else.

“I’ll go,” he says, finally, and lifts his hat from the kitchen table, turning it by the brim in his hands.

“Well,” she says. “That’s good, isn't it? For _you_?”

He frowns. “I don’t know what you mean?”

She almost scoffs, but instead turns and leans against the counter. The hand not holding her cigarette curls into a fist. Her short nails dig into her palm, channeling some of her frustration into little pricks of pain that keep her grounded in the moment and not reaching for the nearby bottle of whisky. 

“It seems you can still come and go as you please from my life.” She gestures with the cigarette, trailing smoke, and then takes another long drag.

He swallows uneasily in her gaze and sets his hat back down, touching it twice, moving it slightly until the twitching subsides.

“Lix,” he starts, and it’s too plaintive and patronizing. His arms hang at his sides, fingers anxiously skimming against his trousers.

“Oh, stop it, Randall,” she sighs. There’s almost half of a smile to her lips, sharp and sarcastic, but still nearly there.

“Is this my punishment?” he asks. The confusion is genuine, she knows. He was never good at deciphering the motives behind her moods.

“This isn't about _you_ ,” she snaps. “It’s about choice. _My_ choice. And that was over the minute you decided to do what you did.” 

She sighs again. “You left. And I stayed behind.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, chancing a step towards her.

She opens and closes her mouth, failing to find anymore words. Tears prick the corners of her eyes, and she stubs out what’s left of her cigarette in the sink.

“Lix.”

His voice is too soft, and her memories are too hard. She turns and braces her palms over the edge of the counter as she leans into it and lets her head drop. He steps up behind her, and to the side, hovering near her left arm. As she moves away from him he catches her hand, and she doesn't pull away, lets him tug on her arm to turn her to him.

She stares at their hands, and opens hers over his. One by one his fingers slip between hers.

“The first time I saw you, _again_ ,” she emphasizes, and he looks at her for a moment before his lips press together either in shame or amusement, she can’t quite tell. “It was in the hallway, and I thought - well I don’t know what I thought. I wanted to feel something definitive, but -”

"I know," he agrees.

“ _No_.” She frowns. “You don't. You _can’t_."

He lowers his eyes to their joined hands and flexes his fingers to gather hers further into his. Her hands have always seemed so small in comparison.

“I knew you were here for a reason, you never do anything without purpose, but I thought maybe -.” She shrugs when he looks up again. “Or, I don't know, maybe I hoped too much.”

“It was you,” he says abruptly. She frowns at him again, but it’s confusion this time and not anger. “It was you, Lix.”

“What?” 

He shakes his head and pulls on her hand again, moving her just a step closer. He swallows hard and she watches the movement of his throat, feeling the tension that keeps him wanting to run from her flat, tethered only by her hand. She remembers another time too much like this, and she wants to be angry again because anger is an emotion she knows how to use. She doesn't know what to do with the desperate ache in her chest.

He sighs, finally, and swallows again. His hand shifts, sliding his fingers from hers to wrap more firmly around her palm and give it a squeeze. “It was always you.”

She isn't ready for this. She doesn't know how to ever be ready for this.

“But she - ?” She chokes on the name, still unable to say it out loud since that day.

“Yes,” he replies with a nod, knowing exactly what she had left unsaid. Then he pauses and swallows again. “I needed to know. And it's done.”

He says ‘it’s done’ the same way he’d give Bel the final word on a story, expecting her not to disobey him.

“And you’re still here,” she says.

He smiles a little, in that tight, melancholy way he has where the happiness never quite settles in his eyes. “It would seem so.”

She used to think about him every day. Then she would make herself forget, and hate herself for forgetting anything about them. They were not a mistake exactly, just better as a memory.

She moves again and he lets go of her hand, which she raises to his tie. Her fingers trace over the red silk, once, twice. Then she takes the lapels of his suit jacket in her hands, pulls them forward and smoothes them too, as if she’s straightening him up to send him on his way.

He looks down at her hands and then up to meet her eyes.

“I should leave,” he whispers.

He doesn't.

The first kiss is hardly anything.

It’s his lips brushing the corner of her mouth, but a moment later she’s turning her head and his fingers are in her hair. His mouth slides over hers and he’s kissing her, and somewhere inside she thinks it’s just like they never stopped. She wants to be angry, and maybe she should be. But then her mouth opens, her head tilts in just the right away, and she forgets why. All she knows is that he’s kissing her and she’s kissing him, and they may have missed a few steps on the way to this exact moment.

It’s hot and wet, tongues meeting and tasting, again, and somehow for the first time too. His teeth skip over her bottom lip, pulling until she makes a noise she’s sure she’s only ever done for him.

They remember too well how to do this.

 

 

 

 

No one died today.

It’s Alberto’s birthday, and somehow there’s a fresh case of whisky.

This is how it happens.

He doesn't know who said what first, but she’s laughing and leaning into his arm, her hand wrapped in his. He thinks he wants her like this always, laughing and happy and close enough to touch. They stumble into the wall outside her flat and the next thing he knows there’s little tufts of air hot against his cheek. He tries to step back but her fingers curl into his shirt, pulling him closer.

His hand is braced against the wall, and she’s holding his gaze. He feels his heart in his throat.

Her other hand moves to his face, fingertips grazing his cheek, slipping around to the back of his neck. She kisses him softly, coaxing his mouth into more. He opens it slowly, sighs at the feel of her tongue over his. Then his hands are in her hair and he straightens, pulling her up against him. 

She is soft curves and wild hair. He is anxious hands and stumbling nerves. When he nips at her bottom lip she makes a noise he decides he might love more than her laugh.

Somewhere between the hallway and her bedroom, he learns to stop thinking.

 

 

 

 

They are not soft.

He twists his fingers in her hair, and she bites at his lip. One hand holds her face as he kisses her, tastes her, teeth touching her tongue. Someone makes a sound but they will not admit who. She takes her time undoing the buttons of his shirt, remembering to go top to bottom, as his hands pull at her hips impatiently.

She still finds it a little scary how easy it is to give in to him, to this and them, because suddenly it’s not just memories, it’s here and now and his mouth and teeth on her neck. He says her name, breathes it against her thigh, and she makes a sound, feels his palm stick to her skin.

It’s easy to forget the length of time that has passed, the differences between that life and this one, between the way they were and how they are. She lets herself be distracted by the patterns his thumb traces at her waist, until she realizes he’s shifted to lay next to her. His fingers brush the chain and ring, his ring, hanging around her neck with a kind of reverence before he looks at her.

One look and it’s the most truth he’s ever given her.

They do not kiss gently, and that’s good because that isn't what she wants them to be now. She isn't sure they ever knew how to be that way. Her need feels unrelenting and loud, her heartbeat rushing in her ears.

“Lix,” he says, his breath hot against her lips. His voice quiet and deep, and it does something to her.

She doesn't want this now.

“Don’t think,” she replies. “Please.”

Then his fingers are inside of her, slow, deep, and twisting just the right way. She gasps and he kisses her again. It doesn't matter because everything has already built up inside her, sharp and full and _there_. Her nails dig into his wrist.

He smirks and pulls back, propped up on his forearm. He remembers well.

 _Bastard_ , she thinks, but she’s smiling too.

He lets her push him onto his back and straddle his hips. She notices he still has his glasses on, so she slips them off and folds them, placing them carefully on the bedside table. There’s an aching familiarity in the act, but it’s pushed aside for more immediate things. He pulls at her hips again as she moves, and soon they've settled in an old rhythm, maybe not as fast but just as insistent as ever.

This is always what she likes and he has never judged her for it, never denied her anything when they were together. The truth is, he told her once, that he loves seeing all of her, watching her, stunned by the reality she would ever want someone like him. Her truth is she never imagined she could feel this fragile, or this perfect.

But they have learned what happens to people on pedestals.

A moment later, there is a sigh and a whimper, and something uncurls inside of her.

 

 

 

 

They fight.

She throws a book at him. It hits the bedroom wall nowhere near where he was standing and falls open faced, folding over several pages against the floor.

He picks it up and smooth the pages flat again rather than going to her like he knows he should. The compulsion is always stronger when he is like this.

This is one of those moments, the kind that become burned into memory, always too sharp and too fresh.

Her jaw is set and her mouth harsh. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

He sighs and looks at his shoes.

“We could -,” she starts, and absently her hands drift over the new swell of her belly. “We could go back to London. Or Paris. Or Suffolk. I miss the country sometimes.”

They could, he knows, but there is an inevitable end neither of them want to face.

He moves to her, finally, holding her face in his hands as he gives her a soft kiss.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She nods. “I know.”

He leaves, setting his grandfather’s ring in the middle of the kitchen table for her to find later and hoping she knows what it means, what he really means and all the things he’s unable and terrified to say.

He hears her break just before the door closes.

 

 

 

 

There are things that haven’t changed.

She lays on her back, and his hand rests on her stomach, his other arm bent under the pillow.

He says, “I’m not good at this, you know.”

She turns her head to look at him and smiles. “ _We_ are not good at this.”

He sort of laughs. “Does this mean you think there is a 'this' for us not to be good at?”

She sighs. Then she turns fully and curls into him, pressing her forehead to his chest as his arm comes around her, hand splayed over the small of her back. His thumb moves in sweeping arcs over her skin but other than that they are both still and quiet.

“I think,” he starts, “that maybe we could be this time.”

She sighs again but doesn't say anything.

“Lix?”

She looks up and shifts so she can see his face.

“I wish things had been different,” he says.

“I don’t,” she replies. “And stop worrying.”

He sighs as he rolls onto his back, and a moment later she tucks herself against his side.

After a while, he swallows and stares at the ceiling. “You kept the ring.”

She smiles into his shoulder. “Of course.”

He nods. “Good.”

In the morning, he is still there and in her kitchen making tea.

She takes him in, every wrinkle and line, still handsome in a way she’s never been able to explain. She wonders if he can still see the same things in her, the woman she was once and somehow still is with him.

There are also things that will never be the same.

 

 

 

 

And so they begin again, in a way, if it can be said they ever truly ended. The specifics are not important.

What does matter is this: he is still here.

She slides the book on the shelf backwards, and smiles.


End file.
